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Dark, Enclosed Spaces
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 ****** An hour later, Alicia had left for the USC law library, and I’d tried - and failed - to numb my twisted thoughts with sitcoms on Netflix. When that didn’t work, I decided I needed a shower. A long, calming shower. Letting the water run until it warmed, I stared at my reflection in the little cabinet mirror. My frizzy, mouse-brown hair stuck out at odd angles. I’d been tugging it in my sleep. There were dark circles under my eyes. Fuck. I really needed that shower. I raised my leg to step into the tub. The water was thick and pomegranate red. I screamed, stumbled, crab-walked towards the door. Blood. Flowing out of the faucet, splashing against the shiny white finish, trickling down the drain. I groped for the doorknob and half-crawled, half-fell through the door. Naked, heart racing, I cowered on the floor. I pinched myself. I breathed deeply, waiting for the stench of Colonel Lewis’s compost heap to waft through my nostrils, waiting for the the tentacles and the poisonous darts - or worse, Mathilde and her answering-machine voice. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. But the smell didn’t come, Mathilde didn’t come, and apparently the chocolate milk did it’s job because the closet monster stayed where it was. I looked at my hands. Adult hands. Adult legs. I was awake. And there was blood in my tub. Shaking, I stood up. Gingerly, limbs heavy and pulsing, the sound of water hitting porcelain somehow amplified, I took timid steps until the running faucet came into view. Ordinary, un-tainted tap water rushed down the drain. I put my hand under it, watched the translucent liquid roll off the contours. I decided I was okay being dirty. I changed in my room. My little brown journal was still on the bed. I stared at it. The monsters I’d seen in all my previous nightmares had been fully illustrated there; it was perfectly logical to assume that I would have included the sickly blue-black humanoids as well. My phone rang. I recognized Luke’s number as I reached to answer it. “My grandma told me you went to see Tommy’s mom.” His voice was cold. Annoyed. “Luke…” “Carol Liu does the shopping for my grandma,” he cut me off. “She kept blabbing about what a lovely young lady you’ve grown up to be.” “I felt really bad,” I told him. “Mrs. Liu was always really nice to me. Why are you so pissed?” “Because you’re re-opening old wounds! I’ve spent years getting over Micah. I spent six months getting over Tommy. They’re gone, and you going around playing Veronica fucking Mars isn’t going to change that.” I’d considered telling him about my encounter with Travis and the ouija board. I knew I should tell him I’d hallucinated blood coming out of my faucet. But, faced with his accusatory tone, I decided firmly against either. “Listen, Luke,” I said, somewhat harshly, “this has nothing to do with you. I wanted to talk to Mrs. Liu. That’s it. And it was actually really helpful for what I’ve been going through. Tommy had nightmares before he died, too.” “Tommy was a manic-depressive self-medicating with heroin.” Luke’s voice was calm now, therapeutic, condescending. “And you’re a schizophrenic who needs to be thinking about all the scary dreams as a symptom, not some metaphor for reality. See a doctor. You obviously need new pills, because that's what should be blocking out whatever season of American Horror Story is playing in your head." He kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. Because, all of a sudden, I understood the significance of the phrase “stop blocking me.” ***** It was a Friday, one of those perfect Fridays late in April, when the sky hangs low like an unbroken sheet of turquoise and everything is green and blooming and vibrating with promise; the promise of a glittering, precious weekend lounging lazy and long. The promise of summer vacation, so tantalizingly within reach. '' ''I stood in Luke’s bedroom, posing in the mirror on his closet door. I ran my fingers through my hair, creating a slight crackle as dried goo-coated chunks separated. Rough, mismatched sections of my hair were distinctively tinged with red - my idea had worked. Sort of. Luke had taken to spiking his hair with Manic Panic gel “borrowed” from Tommy, and I’d wanted streaks ever since I saw them on a model in Girl’s Life magazine. I smiled at myself, then cringed. “My mom’s gonna shit a brick.” Luke, cross-legged on his Power Rangers bedspread, grinned at me. “Tell her it’s temporary.” My attention shifted to Luke’s bookshelf. It was a behemoth of a thing, extending nearly to the ceiling, and it housed a collection best digested in short, well-spaced viewings. There were textbooks - literature and life science and world history, which I recognized from school, shuffled with the tomes of pre-calculus and physics and mechanical engineering he’d brought home from smart kid summer camp. '' ''Then there were rows of paperbacks, titles cutting across their spines in harsh, jagged fonts. True Crime. Luke’s favorite. One lay face-up, displaying black-and-white photos of a semi-attractive couple. Beyond Belief , the book was called. I held it up. “Was this the one where they shoved their daughter under the floorboards?” “Uh…no, that one’s about Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,” Luke said. “They tortured and killed, like, five kids for fun in England.” “Oh.” I put the book down. Secretly, I was still a little scared of Luke’s books, though I often feigned nonchalance as he rattled off grisly details about whatever unsolved bloodbath he was obsessed with this week. Another cover caught my eye - a large picture of a wide-eyed toddler. “What’s this one about?” Luke’s eyes lit up. “That one’s awesome. It’s about daycare sex abuse scandals in the 80’s that were, like, all bullshit. It talks about how easy it is to induce mass hysteria by…” We were interrupted by the doorbell, then the shuffling of Luke’s grandmother’s slippers on the shag carpet as she rose to answer the door. “That’s probably Micah,” Luke said, slight disappointment in his tone. '' ''“Yeah,” I said. “He’s going to want to talk about the Great Bagwurm. He says he’s got some cool idea about how we can break through her exoskeleton.” “Great.” Luke did not sound enthusiastic. We’d have to cut our mass hysteria and murder conversation short, because Micah was a total baby about that stuff. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was disappointed, too. I liked being alone with Luke. He made me feel special, like when we were together, the world was richer and brighter and I was, somehow, a more substantial part of it. '' ''Eager footsteps, then both Tommy and Micah pushed through the doorway of Luke’s bedroom. Tommy, dressed in baggy jeans and a black FUBU t-shirt, displayed a giant, goofy smile. Micah hung back a bit, hands in the pockets of his red sweatshirt. '' ''“Guys!” Tommy said excitedly. “Guys… I’ve got, like, the most awesome news ever!” “Your balls finally dropped?” Luke said mockingly. “I swear I will clothesline you…” “What’s your news, Tommy,” I cut in, derailing the inevitable display of testosterone-fueled immaturity. “You know my cousin Lisa?” Tommy said. “The one who works at the Hollywood Bowl? She says she can get us tickets to the Linkin Park concert!” “Are you shitting me? That’s awesome!” '' ''I’d never been to a concert before. All the girls in my class had gone to see Christina Aguilera when she’d been in town months before, and Lacey Chung still wouldn’t shut up about it. Micah, though, didn’t look nearly as excited as Tommy, Luke, and I were. “Why is your hair orange?” he asked me. “It’s red,” I said defensively. “Luke used some of Tommy’s Manic Panic.” “Oh.” Micah frowned. He'd cut his hair short at the beginning of the year so he could spike it like Luke and Tommy did, but the gel never sat right with his chocolate-brown curls. He’d ended up with an unruly bubble, looking less like Billie Joe Armstrong than Justin Timberlake struck by lightning. Tommy stifled a laugh. “You look like Tony the Tiger!” I tossed a pillow at him. “Shut it, dweeb!” He threw the pillow back at me, which prompted Luke to play-tackle him onto his bed and, after a bit of rough-housing the four of us all settled on the floor to discuss how we’d talk our respective parents into letting us go to the Linkin Park concert. Micah kept on looking over at me, pouting. As though my stiff, uneven red tresses were something horribly offensive. ***** After apologizing repeatedly and cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promising to call the psychiatrist as soon as he hung up, I managed to get Luke off the phone. Then I lay down on my bed, picked up my journal, and read the whole thing cover to cover. It was, in its entirety, the blather of pre-teens who’d played a few too many rounds of Zelda. The Four Grand Adventurers - Tommy, Micah, Luke, and me - were on a quest to save our town from The Daemon who lived in The Forest. To reach The Daemon, we had to fight our way through a series of henchmen, each of which would, upon defeat, surrender a weapon of some sort. There was the monster in my closet. The Droxies, who liked dark places and shiny things. The Bagwurms, who lived in the sand in Allister Park. The AntWalkers, tree-climbing creatures that ate souls - the antagonists of my most recent dream. They had been Tommy’s idea, I remembered, a hybrid of the Dementors from Harry Potter and some disturbing documentary he’d seen about Hiroshima and the Atom Bomb. We’d gotten so far as collecting supplies. We’d armed ourselves with a dagger made of polymer clay (or Indestructible Magic Foam, as I’d so subtly named it), a karate staff “borrowed” from Micah’s sister, and a steak knife nicked from my kitchen (a little scary). I read through my transcription of the cringe-worthy Chant of Power, sung on the eve of battle, and then the journal stopped. I flipped through the remaining few pages. All were blank. Micah disappeared, I went crazy, and the Quest of the Four Grand Adventurers had been forgotten. I walked through my house like wandering about a graveyard. Blood in the tub, scratches on the closet door, what disturbing imagery would I uncover next? I remembered Travis’s ouija board, how the planchard had moved like a small animal beneath my fingers. How did it all connect? It had to connect. It had to mean something. Alicia came home. We went out to dinner. I didn’t bring up Micah again. That night, before bed, I flushed a single orange pill down the toilet. If Mathilde wanted to play, we were going to play. ***** I found her in Colonel Lewis’s yard. The smell of moldy vegetables and rotting grass hung in the air, but it didn’t bother me anymore. The huge oak tree shaded us; the chassis on blocks and the unfinished shed rested far below. We were climbing a pile of cinderblocks, tall as a mountain, reaching forever into the sky. She climbed beside me, pink dress flapping in the breeze, ice-blonde hair falling over her porcelain cheeks and big blue eyes. “You’re dead, Mathilde,” I said to her, as though this were a point that needed to be made. “I know.” I reached for a block above my head, pulled, and squared my feet. She climbed even with me. “Is Micah dead, too?” She smiled playfully and gave me a flinching half-shrug, like a child with a secret she’s not supposed to tell. I realized, then, that she had freckles. That her skin didn’t glow. That her mouth moved. And that she was talking to me in a shrill little girl’s voice, not a robotic monotone. “What do you need to tell me?” I asked. “Is it about Micah?” She shrugged and looked away. We climbed in silence, up and up and up the cinderblock hill. Finally, she spoke again. “Two twin skeletons on a warm spring day. Among the festering ruins, children laugh and play. Empty eyes and gum-less teeth, he waits for you in a room beneath.” I nodded. It was a cute rhyme. There was a second verse. “You have a journey, a harrowing quest. If you do what I say, a prize you'll beget.” And at that, by the logic that only makes sense within a dream, I knew what I had to do. I had to complete The Quest of the Four Grand Adventurers. The Daemon trapped Micah; it had hidden him away for fifteen years, and I was tasked with his rescue. Mathilde's rhyme was more than a rhyme, more than a silly jumprope chant like the ones I’d recited to her, years before, to make her laugh. It was a riddle. She would be my guide. My Greek chorus. “Um, is that all I get?" I called after her. "Do I need to go to a place or something?" But Mathilde had overtaken me. Her ankle hung at the level of my eye as she pulled herself further into the sky, into the clouds. Eager to catch up to her, I haphazardly reached and grabbed hold without looking. The cinderblock wiggled under my weight, and my stomach dropped. My handhold came loose; I lurched, lost my footing, and fell backwards, loose cement toppling after me. ***** June 9, 2017 I woke with a start, and a headache. Immediately, I grabbed the nearest piece of paper I could find - my little brown journal - and scribbled down the rhyme from my dream. “Two twin skeletons on a warm spring day. Among the festering ruins, children laugh and play.” “Festering ruins” was easy. Colonel Lewis’s yard, which hosted both a compost pit of rotting organic matter and the remnants of a forgotten construction project. Where my friends and I used to play. “Twin skeletons.” Tommy and Micah? Maybe, but that wasn't exactly new information. No. Twin metaphorical skeletons - the only two houses, exact doubles, that remained as they had been, both about to be torn down. Colonel Lewis’s, and mine. I ignored the part about empty eyes and gum-less teeth. “Waits for you in a room beneath.” We didn’t have a basement, and neither did Colonel Lewis. We’d had a bunker. My dad built a shed over it. ***** Alicia left early - she’d planned on spending another day at the library - so I was home alone. Still, though, I felt almost embarrassed as I approached my dad’s rickety old shed in the backyard. My psychotic break was already beginning; my palms were sweating, I could feel blood pounding in my wrists, and the vice grip on my sinuses hadn’t abated. I’d flushed my morning Haloperidol dosage, and I could feel myself sliding into withdrawal. But, as I jimmied the rusty old lock with a bobby pin, I could testify I was still thinking like a sane person. Like a sane person embarking on a scavenger hunt for a monster-fighting weapon refereed by a ghost girl she saw in a dream. The shed was a small square room, maybe ten by ten, with a work table running the length of the wall opposite the door. Above the work table were hooks and shelves; below, drawers and cabinets with closed wooden doors. It was completely empty. Not so much as a spare screwdriver had been left behind. I cautiously descended three squeaky wooden steps to the sunken concrete floor. I opened one cabinet, then the next, then tugged open and shut the drawers. The only thing I found was a nest of disturbingly-large earwigs. Then the door slammed shut. I jumped. I was engulfed in total blackness. My pulse, already loud and rapid, amplified to hammer-strength. I turned around and around, batting the air, engulfed in frantic frenzy; stumbled up the stairs; my hand found the doorknob. I turned and turned, pushed, pounded, screamed and screamed. I was trapped. A flutter of small wings. I turned and froze. By the light creeping in through holes in the wood, I could barely make out the work bench or the walls. Something small and grey blocked the light, then darted away. All of a sudden, the room felt smaller. The air felt heavier. I wasn’t alone. Something was crawling up my leg. Something with weight. Tiny hands. I jumped. There was a tug at my hair. On my shirt. A nudge at my back, then another bump and another, and then, with a sickening surge of anxiety, I realized the sources of those bumps were hanging on to me. Crawling up my torso. Something warm and sticky pressed against the skin at the nape of my neck. I shook, jumped up and down, fell to the ground and rolled. There were more and more of them, heavier and heavier, climbing on top of each other, swarming, smothering me like an itchy, creeping blanket. I flopped onto my back. I caught the light seeping in. I saw a grey, gargoyle face, sunken black eyes, fangs. Small wings beating, hovering directly over my face. I lifted my torso, then was immediately and roughly slammed back down like an anvil had dropped on my chest. The second before the light was blotted out, I understood why. Hundreds of them, thick as a cloud, huddling together, wings folded, clinging to me like cockroaches. I thrashed violently. Red, blinding pain, fireworks behind my eyelids. I’d hit my head on the lowest step. Arms flailing wildly, reaching. My right hand collided with something solid. Something metallic. The second burst of pain cut through my panic and jolted my mind back into focus. I remembered my journal. Tommy’s drawing. They like dark, enclosed spaces. They lure their prey in. They’re afraid of… With a dramatic swing, I dislodged the Droxies from my right arm. I grabbed, crushed, flung. Something sharp clamped down on my hand. Paws against my jugular vein. I closed my eyes tightly, feeling their tiny fingers on my cheeks, a sickening buzz in my ears. Another violent thrash. My right hand was free. I reached into my back pocket. I grabbed my phone. I groped with my thumb. I don’t know how long I pressed the “home” button on my iPhone before I realized the buzzing had stopped and the itchy little digits no longer clutched at me. I opened my eyes. I sat up, madly surveying the shed with my blue-green beam of light. I was alone. Had they - the Droxies - ever really been there? The door creaked open immediately as I turned the knob. Had it actually been locked? Or, in my paranoid haze, had I somehow been rendered incapable of opening a door? I examined my right hand. No blood, no broken skin, not so much as a red mark. I remembered the solid, metal object my fingers collided with. Leaving the shed door open, I clambered back down, knelt on the concrete floor, turned on my phone's flashlight, and illuminated the crawlspace behind the stairs. Nestled amongst sawdust and thick cobwebs was a small, forgotten shovel. ***** Next Chapter *****